This German stomach-churner is an example of the exploitation genre at its meanest and most mean-spirited. The slow, slow, slow paced story concerns a young man with a rather morbid obsession – he's infatuated with corpses, and his obsession eventually leads him to suck their blood through a glass straw. There's nothing more to the film than that. Some might say that this is a character study of somebody suffering from extreme perversion, but the film doesn't really have much to say about the protagonist's condition, and instead the director is happy to dwell on one scene of unpleasantness after another.
For a low budget German splatter film of the '70s, the production values are surprisingly high and the camera work is good. It's a shame that the script is almost non-existent and the pacing is so slow; on top of this, the film is largely repetitive, with a scene of bloodsucking followed by other morbid moments, ad infinitum. Thankfully the cheap special effects lessen the revolting nature of Mosquito's crimes somewhat, although all of the gore effects – from the messy blood sucking to the 'hero' removing a corpse's head and pulling the eyeballs from another body – are distasteful in the extreme, and the film opens with a scene of child abuse that proves to be a little bit too near the knuckle and will have most viewers switching off there and then. And, of course, as this is an exploitation movie, there are lots of naked women, both dead and alive, including an obligatory lesbian scene thrown in to pad out the running time.
The only real reason to watch this film is for the performance of Werner Pochath. He's astonishingly good in the titular role; although he plays a deaf-mute, he really puts across his character's psychology and at the same time makes his protagonist a sympathetic one. In a career of playing heavies and bad guys, Pochath may well give his best performance and it's a crying shame that most people will never get to see it, put off by the repulsive subject matter. Still, Pochath isn't enough to lift this sickie from the doldrums, where it carries out the double crime of being utterly unpleasant AND boring, both at the same time.
For a low budget German splatter film of the '70s, the production values are surprisingly high and the camera work is good. It's a shame that the script is almost non-existent and the pacing is so slow; on top of this, the film is largely repetitive, with a scene of bloodsucking followed by other morbid moments, ad infinitum. Thankfully the cheap special effects lessen the revolting nature of Mosquito's crimes somewhat, although all of the gore effects – from the messy blood sucking to the 'hero' removing a corpse's head and pulling the eyeballs from another body – are distasteful in the extreme, and the film opens with a scene of child abuse that proves to be a little bit too near the knuckle and will have most viewers switching off there and then. And, of course, as this is an exploitation movie, there are lots of naked women, both dead and alive, including an obligatory lesbian scene thrown in to pad out the running time.
The only real reason to watch this film is for the performance of Werner Pochath. He's astonishingly good in the titular role; although he plays a deaf-mute, he really puts across his character's psychology and at the same time makes his protagonist a sympathetic one. In a career of playing heavies and bad guys, Pochath may well give his best performance and it's a crying shame that most people will never get to see it, put off by the repulsive subject matter. Still, Pochath isn't enough to lift this sickie from the doldrums, where it carries out the double crime of being utterly unpleasant AND boring, both at the same time.